


all the grey days to come

by hestiaandhercat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Divergene, F/M, Past, Past Storyline, Tom Riddle Era, baby's first heterosexual romance, it isnt as weird as it sounds i promise, what is the use of commas if you don't put them everywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 22,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23426866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hestiaandhercat/pseuds/hestiaandhercat
Summary: If there is anyone that Minerva McGonagall truly hates, it’s Tom Riddle. And that is before he somehow manages to get the job position that should have been hers. With both of their continuous presence at Hogwarts, however, they've gonna have to learn to live with each other - especially since Tom Riddle definitely isn't the scariest thing on the horizon right now and Albus Dumbledore still doesn't want to attack Grindelwald.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, Minerva McGonagall/Tom Riddle
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27





	1. Minerva

**Author's Note:**

> Just to make two things very clear:  
> 1) Canon Voldemort is a racist asshole and you don't need me to tell you that, you've got a brain. The character of Tom Riddle in this novella is not Canon Voldemort, he is an interpretation of the character of Tom Riddle we see in Chamber of Horrors, and exclusively that character. He is also not Canon Tom Riddle, because that guy is also (you guessed it) a racist asshole.  
> 2) Yes, their ages are not canon-compliant anymore. They were when I wrote this, or rather: when an evil sprite posessed me and forced me to write this all in one sitting while I was staring in horror at my own creation; which was quite a while ago, and then JKR had to come along and completely destroy her own timeline with Crimes of Grindelwald, and honestly, that ain't my mess to fix.

Their story begins on a cloudy day in January. Minerva has been on duty for about three hours and is about to be done with this sorry excuse for a job for the entire rest of the week, when she is made aware of a cluster of Slytherins that are snickering and generally being Slytherins by a friendly Ravenclaw.  
“But don’t tell them I told you”, the puffy girl makes her promise at least three times before she unravels the entirety of the plot. Minerva leaves her right then and there with a quick ‘thank you’ and a warm smile (or at least as luke warm as she can muster) and storms in the general direction of the Slytherins, looking furiously at the one who is obviously behind the whole plot yet again.  
Tom Riddle sees her coming, and to his credit, does not flinch. One day, she is gonna make him flinch, Minerva promises herself.  
“Prefect”, he says courteously, somehow managing to make it sound like an insult  
“Tom.” One day, she decides, she is gonna implode, and then Dippet is gonna shout at her for messing up the hallways while Tom Riddle stands idly by, nodding along. Because that is how her life works.  
“May I help you with anything?” Despite his emotionless mask, the Slytherins behind him are less than innocent-looking. One of them openly sniggers. All are looking at least partly bemused. Riddle is probably gonna lecture them about that later, and they are gonna nod along and try to do better next time.  
All of them, Minerva decides not for the first time in her life, are idiots and deserve to be punished.  
“It has come to my attention that you plan to flood the bathroom in the west wing. Is that correct?”  
“But prefect, why would I do such a thing?”  
“Well, I don’t know, because you have way too much spare time. What are all of you doing here, anyway?”  
“We have a break.” He looks at her like she is dimwitted, and for a moment she considers the possibility that she is indeed dimwitted, because that is the kind of thing that Tom Riddle’s eyes will do to you if they linger too long.  
She is so done with this school.  
“Graduation is only a few short years away”, she murmurs to herself, and then turns back to Riddle and his entourage.  
“Well, since none of your class rooms are even remotely near this spot, and yet the aforementioned bathroom is entirely too near for my liking, I’d bid you to do your waiting in another place.” One of Riddle’s minions, the one with cold eyes and pale skin, positively scowls at her, which is something that she has thought happened only in the bad books that Filius likes to read when he is not doing all of his other reading. He calls it book-eating, which she thinks is hilarious, and he thinks is gonna be an official term in a few years.  
“Of course, prefect.”  
And now she can’t even give him detention, because Tom Riddle has already turned around with a certain elegance that seems to cling to him wherever he goes, his minions following in trail. When Minerva hears about half an hour later that the bathroom has been overflooded by a stupid second year Ravenclaw (incidentally the same girl who gave her the information in the first place), she is not even surprised anymore. She goes to Albus about it, because Dippet won’t listen to her, and he tells her that she is probably right, and that he’ll try to get the Ravenclaw girl off detention at least, but there is nothing he can do to punish Tom Riddle for this new affront to the school rules if he hasn’t even been spotted remotely near to the bathroom, which of course he hasn’t, and he even calls her in to witness for that since she herself had sent him away after all, how he manages sweetly in passing.  
If there is anyone that Minerva McGonagall truly hates, it’s Tom Riddle.


	2. Tom

If there is anyone that Tom Riddle truly hates, it’s Minerva McGonagall.  
She keeps showing up in places where she has no right to be, and on top of that seems to have the quite unlucky habit of being an utter annoyance, and she thinks that she is so righteous and deserves a special award for being a goody-two-shoes, and all in all, he hates her.  
So naturally, he decides it’s time to annihilate her.  
He spends a lot of time locked in one of the secret rooms he has found during his first year at the castle, trying to come up with a clever plot to burn McGonagall to death, but can’t think of one. She isn’t smart - she is streetsmart maybe, but if he makes his plot too complicated, she’ll just not be able to see through it, and wouldn’t that be a terrible waste of everyone’s time.  
She isn’t that powerful either. He has heard that she has quite a knack for transfiguration, but although he is well-versed enough on all the academic subjects he considers important, he is not sure he could beat her at transfiguration. He has quite a talent for Defense himself, obviously, and Charms are relatively easy for him as well. If he challenged her to a duel, he’d win, obviously.  
But that is way too outrageous, and even worse, it would make him stand out from a crowd, and even though if there was ever someone who stood out from a crowd, it was Tom Riddle, he is aware that right now is not the correct moment in time.  
He has some plans he wants to put to the test next year maybe, or in his sixth year here at the latest. He cannot have more attention on him right now than is absolutely necessary. Albus Dumbledore doesn’t trust him already, and even though Dumbledore isn’t very smart, either, he is powerful, and in a powerful position at the school.  
But even though Dumbledore is quite a talented magician, Dippet doesn’t like him all that much, and even though Dumbledore has supporters in the ministry, ever since the whole Grindelwald heated up, there are whispers. No, he might be stupid and brave, but even stupidity and bravery has its limits. If Tom manages to burn McGonagall to the ground, Dumbledore won’t dare interfere.  
So, then. He only needs to figure out how to burn McGonagall to the ground. Considering she is a brave and stupid person also, this shouldn’t be all to hard, should it?


	3. Minerva

Minerva starts to feel followed by Tom Riddle. It’s quite the interesting experience, since normally, they’d do this the other way round - Riddle about to hatch some clever trick or other, and Minerva stepping on his feet and telling him to “let go of the snake, immediately.”  
She thinks it’s just her imagination, in the beginning, but it just happens too often to be mistaken for sheer coincidence anymore. Riddle is, of course, not actually following her around like a heartstruck lover. He just happens to show up wherever she is, and it’s starting to really freak Minerva out, thank you very much.  
She takes this kind of behaviour for nearly two weeks, then she decides that it’s way more than she needs to take from this little brat.  
“Where are you going?”, Filius asks when she suddenly leaves their normal patrol route and makes straight for Riddle, who is lounging about next to a girl’s bathroom not even an entire corridor away. Filius scuttles after her.  
“Hey!” She leaves her prefect voice where it is, stuffed into a little box in a small pit in the bottomless abyss of her heart, and instead goes for something that Filius has taken to calling “The Scottish Fight Voice”, after an argument they had about some charm or other a few years ago, in which she got so enraged with her friend that she nearly shoved him out of a window while shouting out expletives that all the British snobs didn’t even understand (which in retrospect, she is quite thankful for).  
The Scottish Fight Voice has since turned up here and then, and is a school wide known phenomenon. Tom Riddle is the first, however, to answer it with a smile.  
“May I help you and your-” He looks at Filius sourly, “-little friend with something? You seem quite displeased.”  
“I am indeed displeased, ye bampot!”  
“Do I want to know what that meant?”  
“You are following me around, I know it. And since I am quite sick of looking at your hackit face all the time, I would like you to stop!”  
“Hackit?”, Tom Riddle asks.  
“It means ugly”, Filius informs him, who since the infamous window incident, has taken it upon himself to learn her language, at least the bits and pieces of it that she throws around when she’s in a rage.  
“Shut ye geggie”, Minerva directs at him, even though a bit more softly, before turning back to Tom Riddle. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”  
“It was not my intention to anger you with my existence. I will continue to exist somewhere else now.” And then he winks - he freaking winks! - at her, turns around and is gone.  
“Nyaff!”, shouts Minerva after him. “The audacity, the audacity …” She trails off upon seeing Filius’ expression. “What?”  
“Well, not to take the enemy’s side here or anything-”  
“You better not!”  
“But he wasn’t really doing anything, was he?”  
“He was watching!”  
There is a moment of silence, in which Minerva reviews her own words, and has to agree that they make for quite a weak argument.  
“I just know he’s up to something”, she tries to explain. “And it is riling me up.”  
“Yeah, I quite got that part.” Filius pulls a face. “Shut ye geggie, really? And you call yourself my friend.”  
“Friends are allowed to tell their friends to shut up from time to time.”  
“Are they now. How come I have never heard of that rule before?”  
Minerva tries to find a response and fails. Instead she says: “Listen, let’s forget about this. If we finish the shift early, we’ve got some time before charms to go to my common room.”  
“And what would I want in your common room?”, Filius asks jokingly. “It’s filled with trampling, inconsiderate, loud idiots, half of whom have never even thought two coherent thoughts in their whole-”  
“I’ve just gotten the book I bought from that guy in India”, Minerva interjects. “You know, the guy who said he had figured out a way to bypass Gamp’s Law?”  
“To the Gryffindor Common Room it is”, Filius says, and starts walking so briskly that Minerva needs to actually, positively run to catch up.


	4. Tom

Tom Riddle is annoyed.  
It has been terribly, terribly easy to rile Minerva McGonagall up, and yet he does not feel as content about it as he thought he would, mainly because nothing else came out of it. He needs to find a bigger plan, a goal to strife for that’ll wipe the smug smile right off the Gryffindor’s face. And actually wipe out her mouth as well, if he’s at it. Scottish, he decides, is a truly horrible tongue.  
He then spends quite some time thinking of a plan that’ll show Minerva McGonagall, and when he can’t come up with anything, he sighs in exasperation and goes off to bully some chubby little first years instead.  
Fourth year turns into fifth. He has to go home over the summer, like he always does, even though he has asked Professor Dippet yet again to give him a pass. It makes him angry, that nobody seems to care about where he spends his holidays, that he is miserable there. It’s not like having him at the school would pose as a huge risk, would it now? He can take care of himself, he is advanced enough in his studies to be trusted around the castle, and it’s not like the house elves down in the kitchen would get summer holidays if he wasn’t here or something.  
No, he decides, the problem to these people is merely that if they actually cared about his situation, that would need to invoke some sort of action on their part, and they don’t wanna do that since it isn’t to their own advantage, at least not in a way that they can see. They will soon learn that being Tom Riddle’s friend would indeed be quite an advantage in and on its own, but he can scarcely tell them that.  
And so he goes back to the orphanage, and spends three miserable months trying to not light anything on fire. He could find refuge at one of his friend’s houses of course (he is used to calling them friends, it is one of those lies that becomes easier and easier every time you say it) but he doesn’t want to ask them for something, doesn’t want to owe them - most importantly, does not want one of them to be alone with him for an extended amount of time, since at this point, that might well suffice to make the whole cult he has carefully carved out of the pureblood families collapse in on itself.  
So Tom stays at the orphanage, and does not set his wardrobe on fire, thank you very much, and when he gets onto the Hogwarts Express Train after the summer is over, he nearly has a plan figured out on how to beat Minerva McGonagall.  
The silver prefect badge on his chest is getting him some queer looks, and he stares back until people get uncomfortable. He manages to ignore the whispers and settles into his compartment - not the prefect’s compartment, mind you, but the compartment his minions and some very fine hexes have prepared especially for his arrival. It feels nice being appreciated.  
He pretends to read a book during the ride, while actually being extremely immersed in reviewing his plans.  
Minerva McGonagall plays but a small part in the overall scheme, but it is a part he is very happy to have thought of. If this is all gonna work out the way he planned it… well, it obviously is gonna work out the way he planned it. It’s a good plan, the most clever thing he could think of, and he is quite a clever one, as he has been told repeatedly in his life.  
There is absolutely no way anything is gonna fuck up his plan.


	5. Minerva

There is absolutely no way Minerva is gonna sit still while Tom Riddle, Prefect Tom Riddle, now of year five, who should really know better at his age, fucks up her school.  
She knows it’s Tom doing all of this, somehow - the whispers, the fear, the cold bodies that turn up now and then, not dead, but petrified, the talk of Slytherin’s monster - even people who do not have personal history with the guy suspect that it’s him, and by suspect she means that they have taken to advising anyone who would listen to not search any quarrel with Tom Riddle, since it seems very likely that you’ll turn up as a living stone the next week if you do so.  
Filius has told her the same thing, even though he is supposed to be partly Gryffindor. When she brought this argument before him, he has simply told her that this is the exact reason he decided against Gryffindor.  
“I’m not saying you should let him be because he is too powerful to overthrow. I am saying that I completely agree with you about the chances of Tom Riddle being the Heir of Slytherin, as does an increasing amount of people in this school, and therefore I’d ask you to go to Dumbledore, or Dippet, and not try anything foolish and reckless.”  
“Dippet wouldn’t even listen to me as soon as I mention Riddle’s name.” Minerva screws up her nose in a completely unladylike way.  
“And Dumbledore might try, but he would need a lot of proof to convince Dippet, or the Wizengamot, and there is nothing I can do to help him there since I don’t have any proof, either.”  
“So don’t do anything”, Filius says, and goes back to reading his book.  
“Are you being serious right now? I should just let a deadly monster roam free in the school while I absolutely know whose fault that is, and continue on with my life?”  
“Well, it isn’t strictly proven yet that the monster is deadly.”  
When Minerva thinks about it later, she will recognize that sentence as a very bad omen, and put it on her list of things that should never be said out aloud.  
“Fine. I’ll continue doing nothing then, until someone turns up murdered.”  
The body is found the next day.  
Somehow her plan has not worked out.


	6. Tom

Somehow his plan has not worked out.  
Tom is not sure where it went off the rails. It isn’t like he could foresee that that stupid girl was gonna run straight into his basilisk while she was busy crying on a honest to god toilet (who does that in this day and age?). He of course knows what is going to happen next, being called into Dippet’s office at his earliest inconvenience. He isn’t terribly afraid for himself, there is no proof and Dippet likes him well enough to not go beyond a standard questioning.  
Yet he is aware that with the whole school at stake, he cannot delay his plans any further, and he simply does not have the time or resources to realize the part of the plan where Minerva McGonagall ends up being found guilty for the whole thing. He has other plans, of course, and as he happens to know that Rubeus Hagrid is keeping a monster of his own down in the dungeons, he simply sacrifices him to the gods of expulsion, and is rewarded with the school staying opened.  
Yet somehow, what terrifies him way more than his plan nearly failing, is the sick, gut-wrenching feeling he gets in his chest when he attends the funeral of the girl.  
Her name is Myrtle, he learns, and nobody really liked her.  
It settles in, then, for the first time, the fact that he has killed someone. He has not murdered her, really, but it is his fault all the same. He has had one of his underlings trying to act especially cocky to impress him, following him and figuring out how to open up the entrance to the chamber, and that is how the basilisk came to be in that bathroom when Myrtle opened the stall door.  
He would have never been so reckless, he knows, and if Abraxas hadn’t goofed up the whole thing, there would be nothing to it. Yet Abraxas has goofed up, and it is Tom’s fault, however much he tries to tell himself that that is not the case - it’s his fault because he was the one who figured out how to open the chamber in the first place, it’s his fault because he just had to go and let some of his more trusted followers figure out what he was doing, not for attention or awe, or anything of the like, obviously not, he would never do that, why has he done it again, he doesn’t remember now-  
And suddenly it comes crashing down on him that he is only fifteen years old, and even if he doesn’t act his age, he hasn’t learned all of his lessons in life either, and he doesn’t know how to deal with the situation.  
Killing people feels bad. Tom hates Death with an intensity he hadn’t realized before, but it’s not only his death he fears, but Death with a capital d, Death in general, the Death of his species, the Death of his home, the Death of Life.  
Maybe it would have been different if he himself had been there, if he had ordered the killing, or done it himself. Maybe he would feel stronger now, and not as estranged as he is. He keeps coming back to the bathroom where it happened in, which he is aware is bad, since he is already being watched closely, yet he can’t stay away.  
His soul is still in one piece, and he is equal parts angry and thankful for it. Angry because that means that the first death he was every responsible for did inconvenience him in every possible way and did not even help in securing his own continued life, and thankful because now that he thinks about it, splitting one’s soul seems dangerously close to watching part of oneself die.  
Tom Riddle is not stupid enough to not be aware of this quite sudden change in his philosophy, and tries to address the issue multiple times, from different angles.  
Is it simply the fear of parting, both in a literal and a metaphorical sense? Is part of him afraid to lose part of himself, or to lose himself through what he does?  
It stands to reason that splitting up one’s soul into multiple components would strengthen and weaken elements of the soul. However, Tom Riddle does not subscribe to such ancient forms of understanding. He relates creating a horcrux to making a copy of an ancient parchment - the original parchment will still exist, but the second one, though not the original, and probably less good in some aspects will be there in case any ill befalls the original.  
Yet how could he know this for sure? Slughorn said that creating multiple horcruxes would lead to an unstabilized soul. That cannot be explained by Tom’s theory, save for the idea maybe, that creating that many copies would eventually water down the original as well.  
He is in the midst of figuring this out when the last person he wants to see right now nearly runs right through him.  
Minerva McGonagall gives him one of her stern looks, that try to say “I know what you’re doing” but fail miserably at it because she does not actually know what one is doing.  
“You’ve been expected for your shift more than ten minutes ago, prefect Riddle”, she says stiffly. Her eyes are dark with distrust, and it is obvious that she knows (or at least thinks she knows) exactly what happened that led to the death of a surprisingly annoying, but all in all quite unimportant girl.  
“I beg your pardon. I must’ve been lost in thought.” He tries for a weak smile.  
“Well, since I’ve done the shift according to schedule for both of us, there is no need to worry”, she says in a voice so dark as if she’d just announced that both of them and their extended family would be eaten by giant mountain trolls in the evening.  
“We are on duty together?” He is surprised by that, and can’t keep a flicker of irritation out of his voice - it’s not directed at her, for a change, but at himself but being so out of it the last couple of days that he has completely neglected any and all responsibilities. What are people gonna think of him?  
Yet McGonagall of course mistakes his emotion for being directed at her and barks something equally nice back at him, and not two minutes later, they are strolling through the corridors, throwing insults at each other left and right. All in all, they’re having a right good time until someone attack them.  
A scrawny fourteen year old struggles under the counterspell that Tom has reflectively put up, and stares at them with burning rage in his eyes.  
“It’s your fault!”, he directs at Tom. “It’s all your fault you stupid-”  
Tom cuts him off with a wandless movement that clenches his throat, tight.  
“That is quite enough of that. Detention and ten points for attacking another student. And yes, let’s see… make that another five points for being stupid enough to attack someone you had no chance at beating.”  
Minerva huffs at him, but does not object.  
“Run along, now”, Tom says as cheerfully as he can muster, and the boy does in fact run, although it’s not fast enough to get out of their hearing before he starts to sob.  
“That was wrong.” Minerva looks outraged.  
“Was it now? I’m pretty sure he was the one who attacked me.”  
“Well, you de-” She cuts herself off abruptly, but Tom decides that now is about the time he is allowed to have a teenage angst outrage.  
“I deserved it? And why is that, exactly? You think I killed that girl, don’t you. Just like everyone else.”  
“Obviously you did.” Why does that hurt him? That she thinks him such a vile creature? Maybe because he is a vile creature?  
“Well, I did not.” The words ring true, and he sees a flicker of discomfort on McGonagall’s face when she tries to figure out if he is lying and finds that she can’t.  
He himself does not feel all that well either. After all, a Riddle always lies.  
Yet later that evening, when he lies awake in the dorms, there is a weird and inexplicable urge in him to go and confess his crime right then and there.  
Tom of course fights this instinct down into the dirt where it belongs, but he can’t forget having had the thought and it haunts him.  
He is quite aware of the fact that he is not a good person. If good people are the likes of McGonagall and that talking halfman she is often seen with whenever she picks an opportunity to shout at him, he is quite happy with not being one of them. Plus there’s all this annoying crap about morals. He’s not gonna waste his time on that.  
Yet while Tom Riddle is not good, he also has not really considered himself evil before, the same way that Slytherins aren’t evil, they’re ambitious, and he just so happens to have ambitions in the Dark Lord department.  
The fact that there is a literal dark in the title should’ve ticked him off a bit earlier, but being a dark lord is not about being evil either, really - it’s about achieving ultimate power. It’s not about using that achieved power to torture, maim and kill every living being in the vicinity necessarily.  
As it turns out (and this is quite a no-go for a soon to be Dark Lord), Tom does not have a taste for killing. Oh, he’s sure that it would come quite natural to him in self-defense, or even just to take revenge on people - but simply killing without that actually helping him to achieve his goals (in this case even completely destroying his master plan), just does not sit right with him.  
He stays awake nearly the whole night to think this through, and comes to the conclusion that he is way too sane, clever and goal-oriented to become a Dark Lord. Tom Riddle does not want power for the sake of power, he wants power for the sake of doing stuff.  
After nearly a week of inner struggle, he settles for the term Morally Grey Lord instead. He instantly feels better.


	7. Minerva

After having spent a sleepless night wondering if her assessment of Riddle has been entirely wrong so far, she has gone to Professor Dumbledore today to get help with this question, yet the professor has proven to not really believe her at all.  
“So in conclusion, you are suddenly convinced that Mr. Riddle is entirely innocent.”  
“Obviously not.” Minerva huffs and puffs and feels generally misunderstood.  
“I’m just here to tell you that last week when I let it slip that I thought he was guilty of murdering Myrtle, he reacted quite strongly, and what I believe to be truthful. He seemed honestly distraught, although moreso by the fact that I thought he had committed the murder than by the actual murder. He’s still a little git overall, though”, she adds after a bit of a silence.  
“Minerva.” Professor Dumbledore sighs. “Let me try to explain to you how Tom Riddle thinks.”  
She sighs in return, stronger than him, but nods.  
“Imagine that you are Tom Riddle, shapeshifted, trying to tell me that you are Minerva McGonagall.”  
“I am not”, she protests.  
“Yes, you are. But you are trying to make me believe that you are, in fact, you. That is what we would call a deception.”  
“I know what deception means.”  
“Good. This is a one-level deception, since there is only one level of deception involved, namely Tom Riddle pretending to be Minerva McGonagall. But imagine, if you were actually the ancient Dark Lady Baba Yaga, possessing a teenage boy called Tom Riddle, who is currently posing as Minerva.”  
“That would be a two level deception?”  
“Exactly.”  
There is a moment of silence. Minerva looks around Dumbledore’s room, every corner of it filled to the brim with many exciting and useless things. The old wizard, clad today in ivory robes with magenta lining still hasn’t sad anything, and so she sighs again and asks: “What is the meaning of this conversation, professor?”  
Dumbledore smiles. “When Tom Riddle was eleven years old, he was able to hold a seven level deception in his own mind for hours without end. It was good enough to fool even a good occlumens.”  
Minerva has to suppress a shiver running up and down her spine. It has been foolish, she realizes, to come here just because Tom Riddle said something and looked especially hurt while saying it.  
“But how do you know that, if it fooled even good occlumens?”  
“Well, Minerva”, responds Dumbledore, looking especially smug. “I happen to be a great occlumens.”  
When Minerva leaves the office, she is somewhere between dumbstruck and annoyed. Dumbledore is right, she knows, but that still leaves her with a simple question: Why should Riddle be lying?


	8. Tom

Why should he be telling the truth?  
Tom Riddle fights his inner impulse quite well over the next days and weeks, but it keeps popping back up until he leaves the school for the summer holidays and has time to sort his thoughts out.  
He is not happy with the whole situation, firstly because it hasn’t gone to plan, and secondly, because he is in the midst of realizing that he doesn’t really like the plan in the first place. Horcruxes sound like a work of genius, but works of genius are often just horrible mistakes in a clever disguise, and he can’t fathom that if he had actually been there the day the basilisk killed someone, he would’ve just created a horcrux out of that death without even making sure to learn all he could about it beforehand. Reading one chapter in a book and asking a professor who, quite frankly, doesn’t even know what he’s talking about half of the time and is primarily known not for his talent at Potions, but for collecting famous people, seems like an awful shortcutting of his usual security checklist.  
Telling other people anything about the chamber was a horrible idea, Tom realizes as well. He does not need other people to complete most of his plans, and for the ones that he does need helpers for, his so far trusted underlings are not the best support he could think of. Many of them are irrational or stupid. Some are so outright wicked it scares even him.  
And just like that, Tom Riddle decides that it’s time to disband his followers.  
They have been a good exercise in social interaction, and he’s quite certain that if he ever needs to build up a similar group again, he will be able to do so much faster because of his experience on the subject matter, but he does not actually need his Death Eaters right now. They only complicate things, and make him seem immature in the eyes of colleagues and professors. And also, what kind of name is Death Eater, anyway?   
Nevertheless, this action does not make Tom Riddle good. He is deeply sorry about the whole thing with that girl he seems to have already forgotten the name of, but it’s not totally his fault that Abraxas wanted to impress him and ended up killing someone in his name. Partly, yes, but not totally.  
He just plans to be a bit less wicked in the future. Wicked people make nice characters, but bad people. To be pure evil, evil with nothing but the evil, will not get you far. You need to be smart, and ambitious, and not afraid to do things that don’t match up with your big resolutions but will help you further a goal, if you'll ever actually become an evil mastermind overruling the whole world.  
Yes, Tom Riddle still absolutely wants to rule the world. He’s gonna find eternal life and let everyone have a bit of it. He’s gonna install a better structured political system. He’s gonna introduce better spells to Hogwarts, legalize curses that totally need to be legalized, work on a better judicial system …  
There is so much he needs to do, and it will surely go a whole lot faster if he has uttermost power.  
When Tom Riddle comes back for his sixth year at Hogwarts, he follows straight through on these newly found resolutions. He tells his ragtag band of mudblood haters that they’ll need to split up for now, but that they are welcome to keep the thing going without him, he just has so much to do, and he is really sorry, but also it might be better to keep the whole thing under the water for now, and and and …  
He is charming as always, and they don’t even dare to say anything against his decision, although they beg him to stay with them. They vow to keep the group going in his name, but disband not even two weeks later - which is of course what Tom foresaw would happen, and therefore he isn’t surprised by it at all.  
He isn’t worried about finding friends, either. The Death Eaters were never his friends in the first place, they were underlings, and he has plenty of acquaintances that he makes a point of talking regularly to, so he doesn’t get lonely by a far shot, at least by his standards.  
And there is, of course, a surprising amount of watchtimes he has with Minerva McGonagall. He is pretty sure that she is keeping an eye on him because she thinks he’s gonna sneak off and open the Chamber of Secret again, but they just pull their shifts in silence, and he tries not to get in her hair too much.  
McGonagall, on the other hand, does not try.  
“Do you really need to tap your wand on your leg like that, it is freaking me out!”, she exclaims one day.  
Tom, strolling through the corridors at half speed so that McGonagall, who is currently reading a very thick, very basic looking book, can keep up, raises his eyebrows and continues the tapping.  
With a loud thump, McGonagall closes the book and looks at him with such an open disdain that he forgets to not be scared for a second. It’s not that he couldn’t take the Gryffindor in a fair fight, but more the fact that she looks positively crazy right now.  
“Riddle, some people are taking their NEWTs this year, and are trying to study because they actually think their future is important, and they don’t want to fuck it up, so it would be extremely helpfulif you get your your head out of your- oh hello, Professor Dumbledore.”  
Dumbledore who has just appeared out of the girl’s bathroom and looks like he is trying very much not to laugh at the scandalized looks on both their faces, smiles at them, pets Minerva’s head in passing, and is gone before anyone can ask him what he was actually doing in there.  
“That was weird”, Tom acknowledges after a while.  
“That was Dumbledore.” And with that, Minerva resumes walking and reading.  
Tom follows her, shrugging.  
“What exactly was he doing in that bathroom, though?”, he decides to ask.  
“Probably trying to find the entrance to the chamber of secrets”, McGonagall replies drily, and it takes him a second too long to realize she’s making a joke, but thankfully, she is not looking up from the book.  
Hastily, he resumes his normal cold demeanor, and stares at McGonagall, who is very much reading her book and not at all paying attention to the hallways she is supposed to monitor, which is very unlikely for her.  
“Having trouble with Potions?”, he asks. It is a subject he has never quite found a love for himself, even though he has good grades. Still, the whole deal with potions and the fact he simply doesn’t get it sometimes infuriates Tom as well. It just does not seem like the most useful skill to start with, since he can just as easily have a trusted underling brew his potions (even though he has to admit that it would be pretty damn stupid if said trusted underling turned out to be a double agent and stabbed him in the back), yet he has to master all the things, because he is Tom Riddle, and smart enough to always want perfection in what he does.  
Minerva McGonagall, on the other hand, is strict enough to always want perfection, and as it seems, her efforts have only increased leading up to her NEWTs.  
“I know for a fact that you are not better in that subject than me, so don’t even try to gloat about it”, she murmurs absentmindedly, obviously not even really paying attention.  
“Never mind. I was just wondering why I am the only one on this patrol who is doing the patrolling.  
Minerva closes her book with a loud thump.  
“Happy now?”, she snarls. She looks like she is going to be throwing around Scottish insults again any minute now. Tom, who still remembers the last time vividly, cannot wait for a surprise, but also he is trying to be nice to McGonagall and people in general right now, so he just raises his hands, and tries to keep the snarl out of his face.  
“I’m just saying, you seem to not really be taking this seriously. But I totally get that you’re trying to study, so maybe just let me do the rest of the shift?”  
I’ll be faster as well, not having to wait on you all the time, he barely manages not to add.  
McGonagall, who seems to have the kind of ears that picks up even things you don’t say, sniffs through her surprisingly large nose, looks down on him for a very awkward five seconds, and then opens her book again.  
“I will do no such thing. You are not to be trusted on your own.”  
“Gee, thanks.” Tom falls back into step with her as they crawl towards what is set to be the tenth to last corridor of their shift.  
“Isn’t your little dwarf friend good at potions?”, he asks.  
“He is quarter goblin, his name is Filius, he could kick your ass any day of the week, and no, he is not better than me at potions. He is, however, better than me at Charms, so maybe I’m just gonna ask him to hex you so badly you won’t be allowed out of the infirmary until after I’ve left this school.”  
“You surely are a joy to be around”, Tom quips.   
Minerva McGonagall stops again, in the middle of the corridor, which would be a problem, if there were any other students around, but since it is past even the fourth-years curfew, and both the fifth and seventh graders are busy studying for their respective exams, there is nobody here she could step in the way of.  
Still, she makes for quite a dramatic image, her potions textbook raised as if she is preparing to attack him (the weak-minded, Tom thinks, always need to resort to the physical) so that he can finally read the title  
“How magic infuses potions? You honestly don’t know that?”  
He makes a grab for the book, and she is so stunned by his actions that she actually lets go. Tom reads the first two paragraphs and then looks back at her.  
“How would you not know that if you take it as an advanced course? Is Slughorn honestly not teaching that?”  
“Professor Slughorn”, Minerva McGonagall says with utter contempt, “has spend the last three consecutive lessons trying to explain to us how exactly his relationship to Mr. Flamel is, and that Mr and Mrs. Flamel are in reality the same person, which he thinks is proven by the fact that he has never seen them in the same room.”  
“Quite a good argument, actually.” Tom has never thought about that, and can’t help but be intrigued by it.  
“It is not exactly a thing to bring up in my NEWT exam.”  
“That might be right. I’m sure Slughorn would appreciate it, though.” He hands her the book and resumes walking. McGonagall seems to be dumbstruck for a second, then she catches up again, the book now tucked firmly under her right arm.  
“It’s not that hard, actually”, Tom says after a few seconds of awkward silence. “Basically, the magic stems from the magic ingredient used, which contains some kind of magical power. All the stirring and following instructions you do is just to get your mind to focus on what you want to achieve, just like waving a wand in a certain pattern and speaking words will help you focus your mind on a certain spell - only that in the case of spells, the magic stems from you, that is why you can tire yourself out casting charms, but aren’t correspondingly tired after a class of Potions.”  
“That can’t be the whole thing. The entire book is about that question.”  
“Well, the book probably goes into more detail, but the gist of it is as simple as that.”  
“And why would you tell me that, exactly?”  
“Because I know, and I hate stupid people, so I make it my mission to help them.”  
He half-expects to be thrown out of a window, but nothing of the sort happens. Instead, McGonagall says simply “Gee, thanks”, and then she lets out a long and loud yawn.  
“I think I’m actually gonna leave early”, she says. “Are you sure you’ve got this?”  
“It’s only another thirty minutes”, Tom replies, trying to sound like he is not super happy about being on his own again. McGonagall is really starting to bum him out with her constant being around-ness. Yet, there is something weirder still about this. He realizes, suddenly, and quite surprised, that he likes teaching. He knows a lot of stuff, and while he has never thought about telling other people about it, he has just made the discovery that it gives him some kind of warm feeling in the pit of his stomach.   
“Yeah, I guess that’s okay.” Her eyes are full of mistrust. “You’re not gonna turn this into one of your brilliant coups to get me expelled, do you?”  
“Who do you think I am?”  
“Tom Riddle. And just to make sure you are aware of this, I have the right to not appear to shifts as a seventh grader because my NEWTs are way more important than making sure no first years are out of bed. So it’s not gonna get me expelled.”  
“I was not trying to expel you.” Tom watches Minerva McGonagall walk away, nearly stumbling into a wall and dropping her book when another yawn hits her. She looks quite done with life.


	9. Minerva

She is quite done with life.  
Minerva McGonagall has made it though a lot. She has passed her OWLs with flying colours. She has seen people set their hair on fire (both accidentally, and completely on purpose to get out of a homework assignment), a friendly duel turn into a fist tight with three people and a house elf needing to be carried into the infirmary wing. She has held panicking friends in her arms and counted to hundred back and forth with Filius when he had one of his freak out attacks, has even had the odd moment of anxiety herself.  
But this is different, and she is not sure how to get through it. It’s not only her, everyone in grade seven is freaking out, even weeks before the exams, but for the first time, she feels as if her panic is as bad as any of theirs. Filius and her are now counting to hundred together, and then to two hundred, and then they scream at each other because all this time they spent counting has kept them from doing their studying for the night, and all in all, it is horrible and she does not know how to get through it.  
It only gets worse when Dumbledore keeps popping up and asking her how her ministry admissions are going, and has she found a job yet, and she should not waste her life with some kind of uninteresting filler job, until one day she loses her chill and tells him that maybe what is keeping her from studying is him being somehow around all the time, and doesn’t he have classes to teach, and Dumbledore grumbles something about how young minds should not be wasted on mindless tasks, and then actually disappears, at least for the next few days, which she is extremely thankful for.  
Then of course she feels extremely bad about the whole thing, and has another nervous breakdown, and all in all, she is not having a good time, but she does get through it in the end.  
The summer after Hogwarts is spent in a rush, Minerva and Filius spend some days up in Scotland, exploring the lakes she has not travelled to since her childhood, and then Filius is off on his one man worldtour. Minerva would love to go with him, but has to settle to only visit him over the floo network twice, one in Japan, where she stays for a couple of days, and once for an impromptu visit in Russia that lasts about three hours - the ministry has, after all, granted her admission, and while Minerva is quite happy about that at first, she realizes quickly that she does not like desk jobs.  
Or, to put it more truthfully, she freaking hates desk jobs.  
After a few months, around the new year, she gives up on any hopes to do this kind of thing for the rest of her entire life, and writes Albus a long and convoluted letter about how she does not understand why he wanted her to take this position, and does he really think she is that uninteresting or is she just not talented enough to do anything of real importance, and all in all, is he completely crazy at this point -  
Albus writes back immediately, and even his writing looks bemused.  
Dear Minerva,  
I am happy to hear that you absolutely hate your job. This gives me the opportunity to ask you if you could imagine teaching at Hogwarts yourself in a few years. I think that several colleagues will leave the school in the next few years - I especially see the position of Defense against the Dark Arts being open quite soon, and I will be sure to put in a good word with Professor Dippet if you do indeed decide to take this road.  
May your work until then be disgusting and your coworkers mind-numbingly normal.  
Albus  
Minerva chucks the letter in the trash, then picks it back out of there and reads it again. She doesn't hate the idea of teaching in Hogwarts, although it sure will be awkward - but is she even ready to teach? Can she do that? What if she has no talent whatsoever for it?  
And also, Defense? She’s not bad at defense, but she knows people who could best her at it any day of the week. How is she supposed to teach a subject that is not even her strongest? Is that normal?  
And is it what she is ready to do? Sure, the ministry job is disgustingly normal, as Albus puts it, but at least she can stop doing it whenever she wants, and instead become some cool thing, like a Travelling Mage, or a Cursebreaker or something like that. Maybe Filius and her could travel together and she could adapt to becoming a Duel Magician. That would sure be a wild life.  
Yet Minerva finds that while she does not want this desk job at all, she also does not want to do what Filius is doing. The two times she has visited him, she offended a japanese lady by accident, nearly became part of a drug crime scene, and been yelled at by several Russian men.  
Filius seems to not mind all the insults directed specifically at him, as well, but it is not a way of living that Minerva could put up with for even a year, and most certainly not a life.  
So she keeps up with her ministry job, and tells herself that it’s only for a few years, and the money she makes is not that bad, and she is gonna pull through this, and Defense against the Dark Arts is gonna be the best thing she has done, ever.  
It gets to a point where Minerva starts mapping out actual lesson plans, without even having applied for any position yet. It’s similar to a little girl writing her first name with the last name of some boy she fancies, only that she doesn’t write names, she writes out the monologue she is gonna hold in her first lesson (it becomes longer and longer every time she works on it), she plans the actual lesson herself, and then the next ten or twenty, and finally she creates a syllabus of spells for every year. She gets to year four when the position finally actually opens up.  
For a week of two, Minerva is floating around, mentally already saying goodbye to her desk, her work, the ministry in general, since nothing can stop her now.  
Then Albus gets back to her about it, and she is in outrage.  
Tom Riddle, annoying, scheming Tom Riddle, only very recently graduated, Tom Riddle, this little shit, has stolen her position.  
“How?”, Minerva demands when Albus actually visits her at the ministry to talk about the situation. “He hasn’t even graduated yet!”  
“Well, he has passed his exams already, and with flying colours at that. And he is quite good at Defense.” Albus, albeit sounding reasonable, is visibly not happy with the situation himself.  
“But he can’t- it’s not fair- Dippet-”  
“Professor Dippet is still the headmaster of Hogwarts, Minerva, and he for one thinks that Tom Riddle is an extremely talented and promising young mind.”  
“I’m an extremely talented and promising young mind.”  
“And also a woman, Minerva.” When he sees her outraged face, he hastily adds: “I don’t care about that, obviously, but Professor Dippet has always been inclined to follow through on traditions. And really, how many female professors at Hogwarts can you think of? Or female duel wizards? Or female Dark Lords?”  
It is right then that Minerva McGonagall becomes a feminist.  
“I will become one of those then”, she vows, “and you should know that I really can’t imagine myself as a duel wizard, so you better get me that position or you’ll have to deal with the consequences.”  
It’s not a good thing to say, she realizes, after Albus has flinched and left, not with everything going on in Europe right now. She realizes that she has not asked Albus yet why he is not doing anything.  
Another year has gone by, and it is 1944 and he is still hasn’t done anything, when Albus Dumbledore gets promoted Headmaster, and by default, the Transfiguration position goes to her. She does not even have to take a job interview.   
It is only when she arrives at Hogwarts, a few days early for the school year, burned by the sun of Spain (she has taken a long holiday with Filius) and carrying an insane amount of books with all her lesson plans, she is quite abruptly reminded of what exactly she was dreading to meet at the castle. Or, to be more precise, who.  
“McGonagall!” Riddle is waiting on the Great Stairs when she comes through the portal, which seems as if he has carefully staged the whole encounter: her weary from travelling, the weight of five different bags slowly killing her back, him on the high ground, literally looking down on her with a sly smile.  
“Here for your first year, are you?” Anyone just passing by might’ve thought it a polite question. Anyone close enough to notice the slight, amused curl of his lip, the glimmer in his eyes, would’ve thought otherwise.  
“I am indeed. And how are you doing yourself?” No one would’ve mistaken that for a polite question, despite the wording.  
It is unbelievable to Minerva that he is here, in her castle, working her job, even though he most likely killed someone, and he never even had a way with other students, how could he be a teacher, and does he have to smile down on her so contently, and all in all, she hates him all over again.   
She drags her six or seven bags up the stairs, and chooses the side where Tom Riddle is not currently leaning on the railing.  
“Know where your office is?”, he asks sweetly. “I could show you around if you want to.”  
“I think I’m gonna be just fine, thank you very much.” And with that, Minerva and her eight bags continue their crawling ascent. Tom Riddle chuckles.  
“You could just use a diminutio on those to make your life a little bit easier, you know?”  
“I happen to have magical artifacts in those bags, and will most certainly not try any magic I don’t know the consequences of on those.”  
“Well then.” Tom Riddle steps aside, and Minerva walks past him. “Have a good first day, I guess.”  
“I most certainly will.” And with that, she is gone.


	10. Tom

And with that, she is gone, or at least Tom can’t see her anymore without craning his head. He shrugs and makes his way down the stairs. Slughorn has allegedly spotted some kind of creature in the dungeons, and Tom wants to find out what it is and either catch it before the students return, or if it is something harmless he can use as lesson material, make sure that nobody else catches it first.  
He has only made a couple of steps, though, when he nearly runs into Dumbledore.  
Tom has the natural grace of a feline, as he always says himself (only in his head, of course, since saying these kinds of things in front of others does not really make one popular), and manages to take a quick step to the side and around the professor before he can actually collide with him. Dumbledore reaches for Tom’s arm, seemingly to steady himself, but Tom has not survived seven years in Slytherin house being stupid, and he brushes the hands grabbing for his coat off so fast that it seems like his arm just moved that way naturally to steady his almost fall.  
“Professor Dumbledore”, he says, maintaining a respectful distance. It is not the first time he has run into the new headmaster like this, and even though Dumbledore might be completely bonkers, he does have a tactical sense now and then, and Tom is pretty sure that he has made a grab for his wand on at least four different occasions.  
Tom, of course, has been born a smart and elegant person (and beautiful on top, obviously), and has managed to fight off any such attempts.  
Yet, if the old guy won’t stop trying to rob his wand for what Tom presumes must be a magical testing to see if he has indeed opened the chamber of secrets all those years ago (as if they could see that in his wand. Amateurs), words will have to be had.  
“I have told you already, boy, you should call me Albus”, Dumbledore says. Tom’s fingers shake in anger, but he simply smiles and nods and then continues on his way.  
“Has Minerva arrived yet?”, Albus calls after him.  
“I just saw her go up the stairs, actually. She should be in her office by now, if she has found it.”  
Her office, of course, used to be Dumbledore's office. Tom has never even gotten a good luck inside it - he was never one of the lucky few who received private tutoring by Dumbledore. It dawns on him that here is yet another reason to hate McGonagall - what exactly has she done to deserve this special treatment that he hasn’t? Could it simply be the fact that she used to be a Gryffindor, and he used to be a sad lonely boy who liked to tell too many lies for his own good?  
“I will see that our newest addition to the collegium feels well accepted and settled in then.”  
And with that, the old man makes his way up the stairs, positively humming in his beard. Tom sighs. It is not like he would’ve wanted Dumbledore to check up on him a year ago, but the fact remains that he has not indeed been checked upon at all, and oh well, Dumbledore wasn’t headmaster yet, so it’s not even really his fault, and all in all, Tom doesn’t care about these things anyway, but-  
He stares at Dumbledore’s back until the old idiot has vanished around a corner. Tom has a distinct feeling that the next few weeks are gonna be hell.


	11. Minerva

The next weeks are hell.  
Minerva McGonagall is fully ready to teach at Hogwarts. Or at least, she believes she is ready until the day that classes actually roll around.  
She spends an insane amount of time decorating the classroom that Albus is handing over to her, and reading through all of her most important books again, and then having tea with Professor Binns because he wanted to know what she has been doing for the ministry - Binns is currently writing a huge book himself, which he calls the History and Now-History of Old, Ancient and Most Modern Magic, and it is quite a queer book at that, since it can open up new entire pages that are connected to the original book by flaps and describe this or other topic in more details.  
After Minerva has had two cups of tea, and five different historical teachings, she manages to politely tell him that she cannot actually tell him what she did for the ministry, since it was in the auror desk job department, and that is all secret information, and he taps her on the elbow and wishes her good luck with her first lessons and tells her that a bright young mind like her should not be worried about anything. That last part would’ve been more convincing if he had not called her Harriet by accident, but still, she is quite grateful, and spends the days leading up to the new year way more excited than anxious.  
What should she be anxious about, after all? She has been a student herself not too long ago. She knows way more than is necessary about the topic she is going to teach. She is well-prepared.  
As it turns out, Minerva has forgotten what it’s like to be a student - or, more precisely, has never really known how normal students think and act from the get go.  
Students, as it turns out, do not want to study. All the nightmares Minerva has had about not being able to answer some extremely smart question asked in one of her classes turn out to be quite pointless, since nearly nobody actually asks questions in class, they just kind of pretend that they are listening, and then they hold their wands approximately like she tells them too, and say as she does, and if something happens, they are quite happy with themselves, and usually decide that they have put in enough work for the day.  
Minerva, all in all, is not amused, and from what she picks up, not amusing, either.  
None of the students dare defy her or anything like that, Albus tells her good-naturedly that she has the kind of teacher’s authority that scares the living shit out of most children (and when a sixth year slytherin does make a comment or two about being taught by a woman, he somehow ends up falling down the entire Great Stairs the next day, and manages to lose his pants in the process). Yet Minerva would’ve never thought that she’d be unliked.  
It is not that she is disliked. Her students respect her, and the hard-working ones even earn a rare smile or two, yet the rest of the class stays distant, despite the fact that some of the older ones even know her from her own time in Hogwarts.  
She has no easy smile, no charme, no funny anecdotes to pull the students onto her side. She has never thought that that would be what being a teacher is about.  
Tom Riddle is, by all means, the perfect teacher. He is charming and intelligent, he can be stern, but always stays kind of funny as well; it is known that he is not to be messed with, yet he somehow manages to mess with himself all the time. Students respect him and like him, and learn a lot more from his classes than they have with the past Defense professors.  
Minerva should not care about this kind of thing. She definitely should not llisten to every little piece of gossip. She very, very definitely should not get angry about it, and even more definitely should not get drunk on her first Saturday in the school year just to not think about how angry she is.  
She doesn’t drink enough to completely lose herself in it, but it is way beyond just tipsy as well, and she has quite a nice time staggering up and down in her office, telling the tapestry and the writing desk in turns what an awful person Tom Riddle is, and how he should’ve been expelled in his fifth year, and how he has no right to be a teacher, not even to mention, a good teacher, and how this is all meant ot be hers, and who told him that he could just take it?  
She ends up making a plan, a plan worthy of a Slytherin (as she thinks) to bring Tom Riddle down in flame. She goes to bed, awake with a headache, tries a few healing charms on herself that mildly help with the situation and at least wake her up enough to be able to properly curse herself.  
Then she sets to work on grading a surprise test she has written in her fifth grade last Thursday, and works through the entire next week’s syllabus for all seven years in a fit of rage. The plan to bring down Tom Riddle, which, by the light of day, looks entirely too silly to be a thing that she wrote, is discarded into the trash, and then, ten minutes later, picked out of there again since she wouldn’t want the house elves to see it.  
Instead Minerva shoves the paper, folded into a little ball of regret and bafflement at her own stupidity into her top drawer, right into back, so far in actually, that she can’t find it when she reaches for it again five seconds later, just to make sure it’s well hidden, and that leads to a quite interesting two weeks filled with paranoidly looking up the way magical drawers work in the library, and the seemingly innocent question if it was possible to lose a person in one of those drawers.  
And with all of that going on, plus her still boiling hate for Tom Riddle, and finding out that this job sure is more demanding than her ministry gig, two months at Hogwarts have gone by before she has realized it.  
Minerva sits on a windowsill one afternoon, celebrating her two month anniversary by sipping tea and watching the leaves fall into the lake, when Tom Riddle just happens to drop by.  
“There you are.” He leans on the window behind her, which is clearly meant to scare her into thinking he’s gonna push her out of the window. Which obviously he won’t. At least she is pretty sure that he won’t, but you never know, so she vanishes her cup with a little twirl of her wand and turns around.  
“Here I am, indeed. Why is it of importance where I am?”  
“Well, Albus-” he winces at the name, as if he is not used to saying it, and Minerva can’t tell if that’s a feint or not, “-told me that we were to plan a partner program for the second trimester this year. How Transfiguration can be used in Battle Magic, or something like that.”  
“This is about Grindelwald, then.” She had only ever seen one person fight the way Grindelwald is rumored to, using transfiguration naturally and recklessly both, and that person is hiding in Hogwarts instead of fighting him, so that is saying something.  
“It most certainly is”, Riddle agrees. “Would be easier to just go and take him out than teach this shit to some scared little first years who won’t be able to keep standing even a second in real battle, but that is just my opinion.”  
Minerva almost wants to agree, and that is making her realize how dangerous Riddle is, because obviously he can’t be right, can he?  
“Albus has his reasons”, she says, and tries to make it sound convincing enough to fool herself.  
“Ah, yes. And you know about those reasons then, I take it?”  
He grimaces at her face. “Or you don’t, but you follow him blindly anyway, just like everybody else.”  
“I do not know why we’re discussing that right now, and I have no wish to discuss it further.” Her voice is as sharp as a hedgehog’s needles, and about as prickly.   
“Well, then. I just wanted to let you know about the project I was thinking about doing, but maybe you want to brainstorm first.”   
Minerva looks Tom Riddle dead in the eye for a second, to find out what the hell is going on this time around, and then decides that whatever it is, she really doesn’t want to know.  
“Yeah, that sounds better. Let’s meet next Friday, after lessons?”  
“In your office, not mine”, he says, and it’s not a question.  
“Why, are you keeping beaten up maidens in your room?”  
“If that was the case, I would be pretty stupid to tell you, would I now.”  
“You would indeed.”   
„See you around then.“ And with that, Riddle leaves her to her own devices again, and Minerva is left wondering what exactly is going on with everyone in this castle.  
The week after that one passes way too quickly, and all too soon it‘s Friday, and her fifth graders are fleeing out of the classroom as soon as she finishes up the lesson, and somehow Riddle is already standing in the door when she turns around again (because he is just that kind of little shit that finishes lessons early so his students will like him better, she just knows he is), and then of course they have to make their way to her office through a crowd of students chattering away happily, while the both of them are not talking a single word.  
For some reason, Riddle ends up leading the way, as if she needs to be reminded where her own office is, and then, upon opening her door, curls his lip in mock disgust.  
„You live in this mess?“  
„Excuse me“, Minerva interjects and moves past him (she might or might not elbow him in the stomach intentionally, but who is to say) to get a good look at her room herself. Everything is in perfect order. Or at least in order. In what she calls order.  
„And here I thought you had been robbed by burglars.“ Riddle picks up a quill from the floor and sends it flying onto her table with a quick wand motion, where it lands with a surprisingly heavy thump on some papers she still needs to grade and a pumpkin she wants to use in her next class with the third years, and then there is something that looks like robes that need to be washed on there as well.  
„Do not touch my stuff. Everything is exactly where it needs to be.“ Minerva picks up the quill and deposits it on the floor again, exactly where it is meant to be so she can use it for her newest essay which is also lying on the floor.  
„You are aware that Hogwarts has an amazing quantity of house elves that are ready to cater to your every need, and much more importantly, clean this… this monstrosity up?“  
„Oh, they tried. I sent them away, of course.“  
„Of course.“  
Minerva hunts down her lesson plans and pulls out the parchment she has used to plan the upcoming project.  
„See? I do know where my stuff is.“ It is only when she offers Riddle a chair and leans back on her own stool that she realizes they almost had good, real banter just now. What an uttermost confusing thought. Banter with Tom Riddle? That does not seem bloody likely to happen to her, like, ever.  
And yet, she finds that despite being an insufferable little git, Riddle does bring some good ideas for the project to the table, and is even willing to compromise (well, kind of) on some (well, one) of her ideas (okay, a joint idea).  
Some of them, however, he discards so fast that she can‘t help but feel a bit annoyed with him. And then some of _his_ ideas are way too crazy.  
„We could transfigure stones into pebbles“, he pitches, and he immediately waves it off.  
„You haven‘t even heard my idea.“  
„And then we throw them onto the students and retransfigure them while they‘re in the air, and then all my chubby little first years are gonna nurse several rock induced injuries.“  
„It wouldn‘t have to be big rocks.“  
„It‘s still way too dangerous. The first rule of transfiguration is to never to do something that you aren‘t completely sure is gonna work out. And by completely I mean, totally, utterly, a hundred percent sure.“  
„Yeah, thanks for the lecture.“  
„Good. Now let‘s stick to some of the more safe ideas …“  
„But that is exactly my point! We are teaching them all of this safely, and that‘s very nice for us, but we end up sending them out there in the world without an ounce of honest talent! Most of my seventh years wouldn‘t last a second against Grindelwald, even the truly outstanding students. Because we never teach them how it‘s like in real life. We teach them how to clean a house. We don‘t teach them how to do battle magic.“  
Minerva does know that he is right on some level, but she is also pretty sure that he is wrong on some other.  
„Because most of them are not made for battle.“  
„If your good pal Albus doesn‘t do anything about the Europe problem, fast, they will have to be ready.“  
And then they are back to their old argument, and spend about five minutes screaming at each other on the top of their lungs before Riddle storms off, and Minerva has to take a rather large sip of scotch.  
This is going to be fun.


	12. Tom

This is going to be fun.  
About a month has passed since their first, disastrous meeting to talk about the project, and now the whole thing is officially starting up, their first joint lesson taking place this Saturday in the Great Hall.  
Tom is looking ahead to it. Yes, he has had to leave aside some of the „crazy ideas“, how McGonagall calls them, but it seems that they have reached a happy medium.  
Nobody has informed McGonagall about the happy part, though. Although their last four meetings have been terribly polite, he can see quite clearly that she is still enraged about the whole situation.  
Now they are standing side by side in the Great Hall, and are about to teach their first lesson of Battle Magic.  
They have planned everything, mapped out two months of lessons in advance, discussed the best time to hold this lesson, discussed the arrangement of tables and students and objects that might possibly fall onto all of their heads and kill them if they don’t do the transfiguration right.  
What they have not discussed, however, is who of them is gonna start talking first. They realize this at about the same time, namely when they both start talking at once, then both stop, look at each other menacingly, and start up again.  
The students laugh. McGonagall grows red in the face, while Tom joins in on the laughter with an easy smile. Eventually, Tom gives an introductory monologue that is way better than anything that McGonagall could’ve thought of, and then afterwards, they pair up the students two on two and make them hovercharm pumpkins to throw at each other, transfigured into tiny little crackers that they only retransfigure at the last minute.  
It is a mess, and everyone needs at least three cleaning charms before they feel decent again afterwards, but McGonagall seems to have a great time running around and shouting orders, and all in all, it isn’t that bad, and Tom finds himself genuinely laughing once or twice (even though it is not the most innocent laugh, since it escapes him when a third year Gryffindor is hit right in the face with a moldy pumpkin, but still).  
After they have told all their students to come back to the same place next week, and their pupils have left the Great Hall, McGonagall and Tom are looking at each other for a second or two, and then simultaneously decide not to have a fight right now, since all in all, there is no real reason to have a fight.  
“That was a good first lesson”, McGonagall says instead. Tom does a mocking bow.  
“Thanks for the compliment.”  
She wags her wand at him menacingly, but does not actually try to curse him, maybe because she has matured as a person now, more likely because she is well aware that he is gonna curse her right back.  
“Well, then. See you around.”  
And with that he leaves the Great Hall, and it takes him about five minutes to realize that he feels weird because he has just spent the first time with McGonagall he didn’t think about jumping at her throat.


	13. Minerva

She absolutely still wants to jump at Riddle’s throat. He is an obnoxious little git, he thinks way too highly of himself, his students like him for absolutely no reason, and he is, all in all, just not very nice to have in one’s life.  
And yet. Even Minerva has to admit to herself that their joint project is not going too bad. They have met for nearly a dozen weeks now, and are well into December, and their students are slowly and slowly getting better at joining their two subjects together.  
Minerva and Riddle are also slowly (very slowly) getting better at working together. They are very far from actually working with each other, but at least they can be in the same room now.  
Minerva is not sure why exactly that makes her feel better - maybe because it allows her to at least pretend to be a professional about this.  
There are, of course, still a hundred of other obligations, like the teacher’s conferences (one time, it was necessary for Albus to restrain her with a swift kick under the table, or she would’ve literally slapped Tom Riddle out of his chair for some comment he made) and the times they meet in classrooms or on the hallways (they normally hurry past each other, trying not to take notice) and then obviously the shifts in the hallways they have to share (some moron seems to have put them down as shift partners for the entire next year - it is Prefect shifts all over again, and Minerva is really, really not here for it).  
But she has been good so far, and simply tried to not see Riddle as much as that was even possible - which, considering that he seems to have the same goal, isn’t too hard after all.  
Still, when after the last lesson before the holidays the prefects that helped organize the lesson plans ask them to join them on a trip down to Hogsmeade to celebrate the success of the project so far, they both decide to go, Minerva mainly because she is ready for the holidays and Riddly probably mainly because he is an annoyance to the general public. They are doing just fine until they reach Hogsmeade, Minerva trudging along somewhere in the back of the group, talking to a seventh year Ravenclaw she vaguely remembers from her own time at Hogwarts as the one who gave her that infamous tip concerning Riddle‘s Bathroom Explorations.  
Riddle himself is, of course, at the head of the group, talking to this and that person, and everyone else, having prepared all the jokes for this occasion, and being totally likeable. Minerva can‘t help but feel a little bit jealous. She has always prided herself on being outspoken and true, yet she does not have any people skills, and it keeps showing.  
When they reach the Hogshead, Aberforth has already prepared a table for them. He seems genuinely happy today, and the room is as clean as ever. Albus, of course, is not with them. Minerva isn‘t sure what exactly their relationship is, but the two Dumbledores aren‘t often seen in the same place.  
Which is fine. She herself can imagine many people she wouldn‘t want to be in the same place with even though they are related, chief of all her mother (whom she in fact has not been in the same room with for an extraordinary amount of years); yet she would sometimes like to know what exactly it is that has ruined the bond between these two brothers. She‘s heard, from friends, that they used to get along quite well when they were younger, and that the whole reason Aberforth made plans to buy the Hogshead in the first place was that Albus already knew he would be teaching at the school.  
Maybe that last part is a lie, she doesn‘t know. It does seem like one of those stories old ladies tell.  
Then there is, of course, also Riddle‘s opinion on the subject, which she is made aware of this evening, scarcely five minutes after they have entered.  
„They cut off contact after his sister‘s death“, he says, out of nowhere.  
Minerva who of course had to be placed right next to him, turns her head around as fast as humanly possible and says: „What.“  
„His sister. Ariadne or something like that. Arya. Ariana?“  
„Albus does not have a sister.“ He has never told her that he has a sister. He would‘ve told. They are so close ... Minerva stops and reconsiders. What does she know about Albus, really?  
He has a brother, but they don‘t get along too well.  
He loves Sherbert Lemons.  
He thinks that Tom Riddle is the Antichrist.  
He likes the colour purple.  
And that is kind of it. Minerva realizes with a start that she does not know the man at all – she thinks she does, because he has taken her under his wing for so long, and he has always been friendly and helpful to her, but he has never told her anything about himself. She does not even know who his parents are. She doesn‘t know what he does during the summer.  
Does that mean he does not consider her worthy of such information?  
Or is he simply to preoccupied to even think about telling her?  
„Oh, you didn‘t know?“ There is slight amusement in Riddle‘s voice, and she wants to punch him in the face for it.  
„It makes no matter“, she says.  
„Curious, though. I would‘ve thought that maybe he told people he liked.“  
That one stings, and if Minerva wouldn‘t be currently clutching her still hurting neck, she might actally wip her wand out and curse him to next year, but instead she just slowly forms a fist with her fingers and then lets go of it again. Tom Riddle is so not worth becoming student‘s gossip for. Or, for that matter, fired.  
„I‘m sure he had his reasons not to tell, and I will not be going around discussing his personal history behind his back. Everyone has goblins in their basement.“  
„So you do think he is hiding something. Very, very curious.“  
„I do not think that! And even if it was true, I wouldn‘t care.“ The students, chattering away happily, turn to them for a second, but then reiterate their own conversation after one of Riddle‘s easy, pleasing smiles.  
„How very noble of you“, he continues about a minute later, as if there had been no break occuring in the conversation at all.  
„How very normal of me. Not all of us are scheming little bastards trying to destroy other people‘s lives.“  
„I am hurt.“  
„Good. You should be.“  
„It is quite a mystery, though. How she died, I mean.“  
„Riddle, I don‘t want to hear your crazy theories. For all I know, Albus doesn‘t have a sister at all.“  
„He did have a sister. I‘ve done my research. She died under mysterious circumstances. Imagine that.“  
Minerva does not respond. Sadly, Riddle takes that as a cue to ramble on.  
„Mysterious circumstances. What could that even mean? How can one die under mysterious circumstances?“  
„If you don‘t shut up right now, you‘re gonna find out.“  
He throws her a look that is equal parts shock and amusement, clearly not taking her threat serious. Minerva decides that her career is not worth following through on it, and instead takes a heavy sip of beer to clear the conversation from her mind.  
„Let us talk of something else then. Grindelwald.“ His voice grows way more somber now, and somehow, the prefects at the table pick up on the mood change immediately and turn their eyes to him – and by extension, to Minerva, who after all is sitting right next to the vile creature.  
A lenghty discussion follows, in which Minerva tries to take Albus‘ side, and is quickly overrun by Riddle, the students, and her own arguments (that somehow, shockinly, point all more in the direction of what Riddle is saying).  
She drinks a bit more than she should, and so does everyone else, and then they talk about transfiguration and Gamp‘s Law, and how there might be a way to surpass it, and what that might mean for the socioeconomic inequality, and then they kinda get to the topic of household charms from there, and then back to Defense, and then they are at the Grindelwald topic again, and continue discussing that.  
Finally, they make their way back to the castle, the discussion still continuing, but somehow falling silent as soon as they enter the school grounds. Professor Dumbledore, after all, has a habit of appearing anywhere at the queerest times.  
They send to students off to their respective dorms as soon as they are through the portal, but Riddle sticks around to borrow a book of Minerva‘s on how to surpass Gamp‘s Law, and Minerva, who is way, way more drunk than anticipated makes her way up the stairs slowly with him in queue.  
„I think we‘ve made quite a good progress with the students“, he says, just when the silence begins to get awkward.  
„In infusing the belief into them that Grindelwald is very evil and should be fought? Yeah, I think you got that point across.“  
„No need to be so scornful. We have about the same opinion on that topic, at least, so don‘t try to go all Dumbledore on me.“  
Minerva turns around to look at him. „I‘m pretty sure that isn‘t even a word.“  
„It sure is. Or more like a figure of speech, actually.“  
„And I thought you were our defense teacher. But now I realize my mistake, you are, in fact, responsible for teaching grammatics.“  
„That wasn‘t even grammatics, that was rhetoric.“  
„Oh, go to hell.“  
She reaches her office, somehow, and turns on the candles on the desk with a swish of her wand. It is messy, as always, but Riddle has the good fortune to not lose a word on that today.  
He seems a bit tipsy himself, although his posture is as rigid as ever, but his eyes, dancing and laughing, give him away.  
„I think it‘s somewhere in here“, she starts, and then decides that she is not going to let Riddle berate her on the advantages of having a clean living space. „I‘m pretty sure in one of the drawers.“  
Riddle sighs and makes his way over there without asking. He pulls open the top drawer and reaches inside, stretching, to reach the end of the impractically, illogically big drawer. He does not find a book, he does however find something else, in the exact same moment that Minerva realizes she put that there.  
„The Amazing Plan to Kill, Maim, or at least Permanently Show Tom Riddle“, he reads her scrawled handwriting, even more messy than usual since she was drunk that day. In contrast, Minerva suddenly feels very sober again.  
„That‘s like really, really old“, she says, and tries to grab it from Riddle‘s hand.  
He jumps out of her reach, collides with the desk (it is the first ungraceful thing she has seen him do in a lifetime) and continues his reading.  
„What even is this?“ He says. The words come out slightly slurred, and Minerva can‘t tell if he‘s angry or amused. Probably a mixture of both.  
„It says right there on the top“, she answers, because she feels like saying something witty, and damn, she is still drunk.  
„That is quite possibly the most stupid plan I have ever seen. You have the audacity to call this a plan, nay, a master plan?! This is nothing but a pile of trash led by a general idea that isn‘t even good.“  
Minerva stares at him, trying to not look like a fish, and failing.  
„For Merlin‘s sake, don‘t you Gryffindors ever learn how to plot? Never in my life have I seen anything this untalented.“  
He reaches for the paper again, but she makes a grab for it, and this time she is faster. She is also unsure on her feet, and stumbles, nearly touching Riddle‘s arm, very definitely touching his foot (he screams „ow!“ in a meager voice, so she suspects it hurt), all in all feeling like a mess. Oh, who is she kidding, she is a mess.  
Riddle reaches out to steady her, and then seems to realize what he is doing mid-way, and lets his arm fall again. Minerva takes a step backwards, and then another, and then – just to be completely safe – another. She glimpses the long-searched book on a shelf by the window, and grabs it to immediately throw it at Riddle‘s face.  
He catches it. „Thanks.“ He seems to get the hint at least, and makes his way past her to the door. Yet then of course, because he is Tom Riddle, and has never been silent in his life, he has to turn around and talk again.  
„You know, I don‘t think to Permanently Show Tom Riddle is even a formidable goal.“  
„I told you, it was long ago.“  
„Well, if you ever need help working on it, just give me a call and we‘ll figure something out.“  
„Thanks.“ Her voice is so dry, it could probably soak up all the alcohol in her stomach. Which it better should.  
„Good night then.“ He smiles, genuinely smiles at her, not a smirk or a sharp grin, but a smile, and then he is gone, and Minerva sits down on her writing desk, quite possibly crumpling about thirty essays in the process, tries to put a name to the queasy feeling in her stomach and decides to never drink again.


	14. Tom

He decides that Minerva McGonagall is definitely more fun when she is slightly tipsy, and also not playing Dumbledore‘s lapdog. The book she has lent him is interesting as well, although it is of course blatantly wrong, and also a few years old already, but he manages not to mention that when he hands it back to her, and instead compliments her on thinking ahead.  
Later he asks himself why the hell he complimented her on anything, because she is McGonagall after all, but then he tells himself that he is a Riddle, and Riddles are meant to be charming liars.  
Their lessons resume after the christmas break, and the both of them start getting along better after that – to an extent that even some of the students notice, until one day, finally, McGonagall is called into Dumbeldore‘s office.  
When she emerges from it not five minutes later and makes her way down to his office to tell him all about it, she is glowing with rage. Tom honestly thinks about not letting her into the room for a second or two, but then decides that he has become quite attached to his door, and wouldn‘t want to lose it in an' angry witch burning straight through the wood with her angriest look' kind of incident.  
„He thinks that you are corrupting me“, she exclaims, in a voice that is so shrill bats everywhere are dying of tinitus.  
„Who thinks what now?“, Tom inquires in what is supposed to be a soothing tone.  
„Albus, of course!“ And with that, the whole story is unfolded before him, how Albus thinks he is evil and Minerva is too stupid to notice („he actually said that! Can you imagine!“) and how he doesn‘t want her to make the same mistakes he made, which she doesn‘t understand at all (and Tom doesn‘t, either, because he does not remember even being anything else than artificially friendly with Dumbledore), and how all in all, Tom is right, and something should be done against Grindelwald, but instead, Albus is sitting here and making up wild stories about one of his own teachers.  
„Well, that‘s just the way he is“, he says, and that seems to calm McGonagall down considerably, because she looks at him with raised eyebrows and asks: „Hell, why am I telling you all of this?“.  
„I don‘t know, you threatened to burn down my door, after all, not the other way around.“  
„I am just really done with all of this. If Filius were here, I‘d have someone to talk to.“  
„Maybe you can ask Albus to get him a job as well.“ He is only being slightly sarcastic.  
„Filius Flitwick, a teacher? I think not.“  
And then they have tea, because apparently, Scots need that to calm down.  
It somehow becomes a tradition after that – their weekly Friday afternoon planning meetings are now always held in his office, with a cup of tea (or four) and all the new gossip of what is going on in the school.  
It takes time, of course. The better half of the year 44, to be exact. They still mope at each other, and kill themselves with stares at least thrice a week each, but they do get better at being friendly – friends, even, maybe, but neither one of them would be first to use that word, and so it gets never used.  
Dumbledore is outraged, of course, as is half of the students, especially some of the older ones, who have experienced Tom in school themselves, and do not think it appropriate that good and brave McGonagall should hang out with him. To that, Tom only responds that whoever thinks McGonagall good has obviously never had the pleasure of her acquaintanceship. When he says that the first time (and the second and the third, and some times after that), he is careful to put quotation marks around the word pleasure, yet somewhen between March and April, he stops paying attention to it, and in June, the line almost sounds geniune when he says it.  
He is prepared, when one day near the end of term, he is called into Dumbeldore‘s office.  
Tom, even though he does not want to admit it, is nervous. There is the McGonagall thing of course, and Albus has had a grudge against him for longer than that, but it has only furthered his emotions. Yet, and this is way more important to Tom, he is also quite aware of the fact that Dumbledore is now headmaster of Hogwarts, and could probably fire him on a whim if he wanted to.  
Yes, there would be problems resulting from that, since Tom is well liked in most social circles, as well as all the important parent‘s houses. Heck, even the ministry would probably inquire why Dumbeldore decided to let such a bright young mind go, but still, if the old guy really set his mind on it, he could probably get through with it.  
So Tom is not really surprised when he is called into Dumbledore‘s office that day. It‘s been nearly a year, and he suspects that the old guy didn‘t want to have any additional outrage surge because he had a teacher leave in the midst of the semester, yet now the year is nearly over, and Tom has a dark feeling that he won‘t be returning next year.  
He sits down in the most comfortable of several uncomfortable chairs in Dumbledore‘s room, which, by pure accident, also happens to be the one with the most intolerable colour scheme, so at least he‘ll have to see the least of it during his stay in this monstrosity of interior design, trying not to let his panic show.  
It‘s not that he is relying on this job that much. He is young, he is smart, and he is good looking, and with his grades and the added benefit of some of his school friends being incredibly wealthy purebloods, he could probably become even minister in less than a decade.  
But he wants to stay at Hogwarts. He has found a love for teaching that surpassed even the wildest imaginations he had that day in the corridor, when McGonagall walked off huffing and puffing about him being smarter at potions than her, and he realized that giving people information in a comprehensible way was way more fun than anticipated. And he loves the castle itself more than he has ever loved any other place.  
He does not want to go. He would probably live as a madmen in the woods if that meant that he was allowed to stay here.  
Yet when Dumbledore speaks, it is not what Tom expects to hear.  
„I am aware“, the old man says, „that the two of us have not yet found any liking for each other.“ He smiles. It is not a friendly smile, albeit not an unfriendly one either. It is, Tom will think later, the smile of someone who was meant to go mad a long time ago.  
„Yet it seems to me that Minerva and yourself have been hitting it off recently.“  
„That is not the wording I would prefer, but yes, we have become acquaintances.“  
He does not say friends. It seems a foolish word, made for a child, and he has never been one of those.  
„I want you to know, Tom, that I have no personal grudge against you. Yet, and this is why I called you here today, I can‘t help but feel a certain apprehension when it comes to your type.“  
„My type?“  
Dumbledore smiles. „The kind of type that is currently running about in Germany.“  
That is so cruel and uncalled for and all in all not true that Tom Riddle, for the first time in his life, is speechless.  
„I am not Grindewald“, he says after he has regained his composure, and maybe the strain in his voice, or the certain edge to his expression makes Dumbledore actually believe it, or maybe he just pretends, because he simply nods and moves on with his monologue, as if he had not just called someone a Dark Wizard responsible for millions of deaths.  
„I do have cause to hope that you will not evolve into that direction. It might be a foolish old man‘s hope, but it seems to me that it would be equally foolish to not listen to my instincts at all.“  
„You don‘t say.“   
„It makes one wonder“, Dumbledore continues without responding. „If maybe fate is a much more frail thing than one thought.“  
„I don‘t believe in fate“, Tom says.  
„I did when I was younger, and then I didn‘t, and then I did again.“ Dumbledore smiles his off smile again. „It is weird how perception changes with age, isn‘t it?“  
He seems to expect an answer to that, so Tom says „Yes.“  
„Well then.“ Dumbledore stands up, and Tom hastily does the same, and before he knows it, he is on his way back downstairs, and nearly collides with Minerva who just happens to come running down the hallway that very second. She grabs his arms.  
„Did he fire you?“, she inquires in a voice that deserves to be printed in capital letters.  
„If I have not entirely misread the signs, and to be quite frank, I‘m not sure that I haven‘t, then no, he has not fired me.“  
„Thank Merlin. And by that I mean, he should thank Merlin, because otherwise, I‘d go up there right now and eat his entire can of Sherbet Lemons, and he‘d feel so stupid after that.“ Her cheeks are red from running, and Tom has to make a conscious effort to let go of her arms and take a step back.  
„Really? I had no idea you were so happy to keep me in the school.“  
„This is not about my happiness“, she responds immediately, although her cheeks do flush a little more at that. „This is about you being actually good at teaching, and if Albus fired you, the only explanation would be his personal vendetta against you, and I just don‘t think that‘s fair.“  
„Ah, outspoken, brave, just, and terrible with words. Ladies and gents, the Gryffindor has arrived.“  
She elbows him into his stomach for that, and then they go and have tea.  
The school year is nearly over and they don‘t have any papers to grade or lessons to prepare, so they sit outside, in the sun, sipping tea and pop drinks out of a can in turn (cans, Tom Riddle finds, are an amazing invention of muggle kind, and should by all means be kept around for the future).  
Minerva tells him about her summer plans – she wants to go and visit Filius again, maybe tour around for a week or two, and then she is gonna go to the United States to hunt dragonflies. Apparently, there has been a huge jump in the dragonfly supply over there, and she is adamant to check it out.  
Tom does not have any plans for the summer, and that is what he tells her when she asks.  
She cocks her head. „Are you just gonna sit in the castle and read for two months?“  
„It‘s a big castle. I can finally get around to sitting in all the places that I wanted to sit in this year.“  
She laughs about that, for a split second, but then grows serious again.  
„You are aware that travelling is a thing that people do, right? Or at least not working?“  
„That‘s what people with smaller brains do, because their brains are exhausted by all the work they put in. I, for once, have been blessed with a bigger brain, and can therefore work year-round.“  
„You are an idiot“, she tells him, and it‘s the nicest insult he has ever gotten.  
„Proud to be one, ma‘am.“  
„Stop that.“ She whacks a can at him, and because she already opened it, there‘s drink everywhere on their robes, and they have to use several cleaning charms, but it‘s absolutely worth it.  
Tom does not tell Minerva about the things Dumbledore said. He is not sure why, maybe because they are actually not shouting at each other for once, and he doesn‘t want to ruin that. But later, when Minerva has gone inside again, and left him alone on the ground, watching the lake, he thinks that maybe he didn‘t tell her because he was afraid she‘d agree.  
He is afraid that he himself agrees, after all.


	15. Minerva

She is afraid that she agrees with Tom Riddle more than she does with Albus, and it is freaking her out. The whole situation is freaking her out. She has taken to addressing him as Tom, which after years of shouting Riddle through the corridors, just seems plain out wrong. She has invited him to America, for Merlin‘s sake (he said no, but thank you, he does not like Americans, since they think to highly of themselves, which, all things considered, is just plain out hypocritic coming from him, but she has not commented on it).  
It does feel like it‘s gonna be a good thing to get away for a little while. So, only a day after the students have left for the Hogwarts Express, Minerva packs a bag of hastily assembled clothes herself and calls her friend through the Floo Network, to inquire about his exact whereabouts.  
Filius is happy to see her, of course, and tells her that he is in Asia again, so she throws out the assorted clothes she has packed, transfigures something that‘ll help her to blend in more, and apparates straight into the room that Filius is staying in.  
He has many adventures to tell off, and asks about her life as well, and she finds that she can scarcely tell him anything without mentioning the whole Tom Riddle thing, so she does that which she has not done in her letters so far, and therefore it comes as quite a shock for Filius, but he takes it with ease.  
They are having a right good time, still, until he asks about Grindewald.  
„Has Albus still done nothing?“   
„Nothing that I know of. I‘m sure he is working some underground organization or other, but that is-“  
„Not enough“, he finishes her sentence.  
It irks her that all three of them, Filius and Tom and herself, agree on this, yet Albus still does not want to simply go and end the thing. She knows it‘s not gonna be that simple, and if she is quite honest, she is very afraid that Albus might not come back if he leaves. She is afraid for who will go with him, and afraid that he won‘t pick her, yet the most afraid she is of nothing happening at all. They can‘t just let Grindewald take the world, after all.  
Yet if you asked Albus, the whole thing didn‘t even seem to be on his agenda.  
„He doesn‘t talk about it“, she tells Filius. „He doesn‘t like when people bring it up in passing. He won‘t even mention it while talking about other things. Last month I told him how I wanted to go to Switzerland, and he said that that was a very fine place to be if there wasn‘t a _situation_ in the way.“  
„A situation?“  
„Exactly. It‘s not that hard to speak the guy‘s name, is it now? A situation.“ Minerva huffs and puffs, and Filius agrees with her, yet they don‘t even try to plan something on their own. They are not stupid (both of them, after all, could‘ve gone to Ravenclaw), and even though they are brave, they know their limits well enough to understand what surpasses them greatly.  
Albus is round about the only person in the world whose powers match Grindelwald‘s right now, except for some other dark mages probably hiding out in Albania and waiting until the whole crisis is subverted and the world is bled out. If Albus doesn‘t do anything about the _situation_ , then the situation will not be handled at all.  
Sure, a group of them could try and go down there, but Grindewald would probably kill them all before they had even made it past his front door. So, the only thing that is left to do, the only thing they can do, is to wait for Albus‘ move.


	16. Tom

He is sick and tired of waiting for Albus‘ move.  
After Minerva returns from the United States, it gets slightly better, but still, an entire summer spent locked in the castle, with nothing else to think about and nobody to vent to, Tom is quite adamant that something must be done immediately. He just can‘t wait any longer – every day they sit here talking instead of actually doing something against Grindelwald is a day that thousands of lives are lost.  
It‘s quite easy to forget, if you‘re safe behind the castle walls, cut off from everything going on elsewhere, but when the school year resumes, the owls coming in for students with short, abrupt notices of the death of a loved one, the burning-down of a house, the missing of a soldier, the times grow darker and darker even in this safe abode.  
Tom is quite convinced that Dumbledore has gone mad at this point. Maybe he is too powerful to function like a normal human being. Maybe he actually doesn‘t understand what‘s at stake here. Maybe he is simply waiting for the right moment to make a dramatic entrance. Whatever it is, Tom is not gonna deal with it any longer.  
He is sick of waiting, and yet he waits and waits and waits, until 1944 grows one year older, and January turns into February into March into April.  
And then he stops waiting.  
It is not a specific event that sets him off, it is more like the long awaited conclusion of a fire steadily burning hotter and hotter.  
He comes into the Great Hall that morning and sees some Ravenclaw cry over a letter, heart-wrenching sobs that nobody is paying much attention to besides the people actively trying to sooth his pain – not because they are heartless, but because they are so used to it that it's not a big deal anymore.  
He sees the faces of them still, growing harder and harder with every day, even of the little ones. They don‘t look like children anymore, he realizes, because even here, in this safe environment, the war has made them grow up.  
The teacher‘s table is even less cheerful if that is even possible, there are whispers everywhere, and dark looks, and tear stains on some faces, because the older you grow the more people you‘ll know, and the more people you know, the more people will have died already.  
And then Tom goes a full day teaching classes and trying to be his ordinary cheerful self, and he says the looks the give him, a flicker of hope that he might make everything okay again, and then the realization that no, a few nice words are not gonna magically solve all their problems, and he sees the older students trying to learn all the dangerous spells he is supposed to warn them of instead of teaching them himself, and he can‘t help but teach them anyway, because they need to be ready, the want to be ready for when the unspeakable, the unthinkable happens not only to their loved ones, but to themselves.  
It is not a question of if anymore, it is a question of when.  
Tom has never liked foregone conclusions.  
He teaches normally that day, doesn‘t scream at everyone, doesn‘t rush out in the middle of class. He is being his normal self, at least on the outside.  
On the inside, he has finally shattered. It is too much to keep his composure up any longer. It is too much to ask for him to wait. He does not want to wait. He is not able to wait any longer.  
He visits Minerva‘s office straight away when lessons are over that day, has to wait in front of the door because she isn‘t even there yet, and when she does come along the corridor, arms heavy with books she teaches nothing but lies out of (and beautiful lies they are, extravagant and helpful and charming, but lies all the same), she realizes at once that something is off, and pulls him into her office before he can start speaking.  
He starts speaking anyway, before the door is closed, and Minerva loses the hold on her books, and they drop to the ground in a mess of tangled pages, tangled words, tangled lies.  
„I‘m going.“  
„No“, she says. It‘s not a firm no, not a „don‘t even think about that, young man“ no. Instead, it sounds like someone is drowning inside of her lungs.  
„Yes.“ He closes the door behind them, more out of reflex, to keep his body occupied, when all he wants to do is jump out of the room, out of the building, do what he should‘ve done a long time again, what he should‘ve always done instead of talking.  
How can he even think for one second that he is better than Dumbledore? He has not done anything against Grindelwald himself, either, just talked, talked and talked and talked, while lives were slipping away in a constant frenzy, lives and lives and lives he will never be able to save now.  
„Tom, you‘re not powerful enough on your own.“  
She says Tom, not Riddle, and there is an urging in her voice, a terrible truth, but he closes his ears from it.  
„You could come with me.“ He only realizes that second that that is what he is hoping for, that that is why he is still here, and not gone already. How many lives are ticking away this very second? He doesn‘t have time to waste, and yet he is standing here, wasting it, holding his hand out for her, waiting, hoping, begging, that she takes it.  
Minerva does not take his hand. Instead, she reaches for his arms, her fingers soothing, understanding, yet firm in her no, pushes his arm down.  
„We are not powerful enough. You know that. Albus is the only one who-“  
„Albus is the only one who is fine with sitting on his ass all day doing nothing!“  
His tone is sharp and he nearly cuts himself on his words.  
„Please“, she begs of him. „I know that Albus seems to behave irrational, but we need to-“  
„You can wait for your lord and master Dumbledore.“ His voice grows sharper still, and now it is cutting _her _, he can almost see it, drawing long, red gashes open in her face.  
She stumbles back a little, loses contact to him. Her books are still on the floor, pages broken, covers bleeding.  
„I am going“, Tom says, and then he is going, opens the door and closes it behind him, putting a simple locking charm on it.  
He can hear Minerva‘s footsteps inside, anticipates her second of shock, and then, a little faster than he imagined, the action that follows it, her handfalls on the door, he outcry - „Tom!“ - but he is not waiting around for her to scramble for her wand in a hurry, to open the door and find-  
Nothing.  
No, he is gone already, faster and faster, rushing through the hallways, down the stairs, through the portal.  
There is nobody in his way. The students have taken to retreat to their dorms early these days, maybe because they can cry more openly there, and the teachers are little better. The whole castle, the whole country, is just sitting and waiting, waiting for an old mad fool to make a move that‘ll never come.  
He can hear Minerva behind him now, running, and sends a slipping charm over his shoulder without looking. Tom picks up his own pace and reaches the gates to the grounds, steps through, and is gone with a quick flick of his wand. Faster now.__


	17. Minerva

Faster now. Minerva does not stand around, looking at where Tom has just vanished. She does not wait for a helpful sidekick to jump out of the bushes and help her out of her misery.  
She makes a different mistake, still.  
Minerva turns on her toes and runs back to the castle, the soles of her feet hardly touching the ground.  
Albus is in his office, looking at a picture in a golden frame that vanishes from his hands as soon as she enters the room.  
„Tom is gone after Grindelwald“, she says, in one breath, and then she collapses on the ground because she has brought the message, she has done as is right, she has told Albus, and Albus will take care of it.  
Albus does not take care of it.  
It takes her a full minute to realize, while she is panting and gasping for breath, that Albus is not doing anything. He is just sitting there, looking at her, expressionless, without even indicating that he has heard what she just told him.  
She repeats her message.  
„Well, that does neatly solve at least one of our problems“, he replies finally, not even in her direction, but more to himself.  
„Albus.“ Her legs threaten to give out under her when she stands up again, but she does so anyway. „He is going to die.“  
„Yes.“  
„And you‘re still not going to do anything.“  
„Minerva.“ There is so much pain in his voice that it hurts her, for a second, but she still doesn‘t back down. „I cannot face Gellert. I am not saying I don‘t want to, I‘m saying I can‘t. Not … not now.“  
„Oh, and how long are you planning on waiting?“  
„Minerva, I can‘t-“  
„No, you were right the first time. You don‘t want to. Tom has never meant anything to you anyway.“  
„I didn‘t mean-“ His eyes flicker fully awake for the first time in weeks, and it makes her realize that she has gotten way too used to the grey haze that is between him and the world most of the time.  
„Minerva“, he says, begging for a world of words all in one, and it makes her remember of how she has said „Tom“ in the same way, not even fifteen minutes before.  
„Well, then. I‘m going as well. Maybe that‘ll solve your other problem as well?“  
She turns to the door, but it locks itself shut before she has even made a step. Albus is standing now, leaned heavily on his desk.  
„Minerva, I cannot let you do that.“  
„But you full well could let him do that, couldn‘t you. What a fine man you are indeed.“  
She turns, then, and makes for the window, and maybe he has not considered that option, or maybe he is more hurt by her words than she anticipated, but he the spell he fires on the lids bounces off the window sill, useless, and then she opens the window with her own spell, and jumps.  
She has never quite mastered the hovering charm to this extent, but she is too angry to care and for some reason, that makes it easier.  
Minerva leaves the school grounds behind airborne, and apparates as soon as it‘s possible.  
Still, she is almost too late.


	18. Tom

She is almost too late.  
Tom is lying on the ground when Minerva arrives, and there is blood, so much blood, and he feels like he hasn‘t even put a scratch on Grindewald, and oh my, how could he have been so stupid, how could he have thought that he actually stood a chance against this kind of power?  
He doesn‘t remember now, but he finds that he doesn‘t remember most things, and there is beauty in forgetting. There is also beauty in pain, and he clings on to it, because it makes him remember that he is still alive (he keeps forgetting) and someone is laughing in the distance, and he isn‘t sure if it is himself, but then the laughter abruptly chokes off and is replaced by a curse when Minerva appears, and he realizes belatedly that it was Grindelwald laughing, not him.  
He isn‘t sure why that is important, but it feels like it is.  
He is splain across a wall, and there is a hole in his chest, and he is barely able to see because his vision is full of black and red spots, like a movie tape from two decades ago, but he does see Minerva clearly, she is standing up, her face upraised, wand in hand.  
So she has come. Minerva McGonagall truly is as stupid and ambitious as him. They have the best traits of both of their houses.  
He wants to tell her that it was a mistake coming here, that she should go, now, while she still can, but it is clear that she can‘t go, won‘t ever go anywhere again, because they are both dying.  
He should‘ve made a horcrux , he thinks neutrally while he watches Minvera dotch a streak of green light and then send one in return.  
It is not an emotional thought, there is no grudge in it, not feeling, not even the despair of the dying. He just realizes that if he had indeed made a horcrux, then he would be able to live through this, and it‘s stupid to throw away a lifeline like that. But oh, if he had made one, would he have ever come here?  
They wouldn‘t have died, either of them, at least not here, and not now.  
Tom Riddle is deeply afraid of dying.  
He has always been, and he will always be (although always might not be that far away, now) because he cannot wrap his mind around the concept of something simply ending. And he has managed not to worry until now, there was time, after all. A wizard can easily grow to be a hundred and fifty before he is even considered elderly, and Tom has always thought that he would be able to find a permanent solution to his problem until then.  
He does not have any time on his hands now, only blood, and he needs to move his head to see Minerva, on the ground, a broken thing, and Grindelwald is standing over her, trying to decide which of them to kill first.  
They are done.  
This is how he ends.  
It is a weird thought.  
And then this isn‘t how he ends after all, because there is flame and light and _saviour _and Grindelwald turns from them, and the darkness subsides.__


	19. Minerva

The darkness is coming for her in waves.  
She can‘t feel her feet anymore, and then the feeling of not feeling is crawling up her legs and into her stomach and then it is beginning in her fingertips as well.  
Minerva McGonagall has never been afraid of death. She is a pupil of Albus Dumbledore, after all, and Albus always says that death is nothing but the next great adventure.  
Yet as she is lying here, being quite abruptly pushed into her next great adventure, the last chapter of her life left unfinished, with hundreds and hundreds of blank pages, she realizes that the reason she didn‘t fear death before is that she has simply not thought about it.  
Death, as a concept, is too abrupt to understand. It is pain and darkness and crying and a hundred of unsaid sentences, and a hundred of unhugged people, and a day that she will never be able to see, and so many futures left unfulfilled.  
Death is radical because it means that there is no way back, and Minerva clings to life, clings to the warmth pulsing through her, fighting against the freezing charm that Grindelwald must‘ve hit her with, she fights and fights and fights a losing battle, parts of her mind screaming at her to just give in, but she can‘t, she will never be able to, because life is too precious to simply let go of.  
And then there is Albus, and she clings on harder and harder.  
She hears words spoken and curses shouted, and something that sounds like a bird, and then, suddenly, there is the weight of a little creature on her head, and she realizes belatedly that she had closed her eyes somewhen along the line, and opens them up again, to find gold and red and orange, and two smart black eyes staring down on her.  
The phoenix sings, and it is the most beautiful thing she will ever hear.  
Warmth flows back into her, warmth and warmth and more of it still, and she feels like she has never been truly warm before.  
As soon as she can, she sits up and crawls over to where her brain tells her Tom must be. The bird leaves her shoulder and it takes her a whole second of crawling to realize that he is probably helping Albus.  
He is there, and blood is there as well, more blood than she can handle, and she has lost her wand somewhere, but there is not time to search, and so she grabs Tom‘s wand instead.  
His fingers are twisted around it, uneager to let go, and she has to nearly break his fingers.  
His eyes flutter open, and his lips form what might be her name, or might not be anything coherent at all, and she finally manages to rip the wand free, points it at him and murmurs the first healing charm that she can think of.  
The phoenix returns now, and cries on Tom‘s wounds. They are closing faster, but not fast enough, and so she casts and casts all the healing charms she can think of, power bleeding out of her faster than she just regained it.  
Tom blinks, and his eyes fall closed again, and she screams his name and hits his arm, which she is quite sure is not how you should react in that situation, but she can‘t help it. The battle rages on behind them, for what feels like hours, and only when Tom manages to keep his eyes open, and his wounds are fully healed, Minerva allows herself to turn around and see how it is going.  
Albus is a flash in the air, nothing more than a bit of light throwing curses and anti curses and anti anti curses, but Grindelwald matches him every bit. It makes Minerva realize that she has never stood a chance.  
Tom grabs her hand, and his lips form words. She moves closer, puts her ear to his mouth and understands what he is saying.  
„I don‘t know who‘s winning“, she whispers, because she honestly can‘t tell, everything is moving too fast, and part of her wants to promise Tom that Albus is going to win anyway, but she knows that to be not true, and she has learned early on that you never try to fool an expert liar.  
It‘s hours, actual hours that she is waiting, with the phoenix flying into the battle then and again, trying to heal Albus to his best abilites. Minerva tries to throw in a curse sometimes, but she is slow and sloppy and tired, and she doesn‘t think she is helping much.  
Tom, for his part, is busy staying alive. She tries to apparate him out, but feels the anti apparition wards that Grindelwald must‘ve thrown up after Albus rushed in, and decides that she cannot possibly hope to overcome them. She is too weak to carry Tom out, either, although she does manage to slide him to a place a bit more out of view from the battle.  
Then she just sits, hunched over Tom as if that might save him from being killed off for good, sometimes sliding to this or that side of the wall they are covering behind to see how the battle is going, seeing scarcely anything, understanding nothing at all.  
Sometimes she‘ll come jumping forth behind the wall and throw some curse she is able to muster up with what is left of her energy, and then Albus will scream at her to get back, and throw up shields for her, and it makes her feel way more of a nuisance than any actual help, so she stops doing it for a while after.  
That battle lasts and lasts. Sometimes, she wants to sleep, but she can‘t because she‘ll die if she sleeps. The cold is returning to her limbs slowly, but she can‘t ask the phoenix for more of his power, he is busy healing Albus, and in regular intervals checking up on Tom.  
She finally decides to try and see how it is going for another time, and barely manages to escape a hex that is fired in her direction as soon as the puts her head out from behind the wall they still use as cover.  
Grindelwald is right in front of her and she doesn‘t even think about it, simply raises her wand and fires a tripping hex.  
His shields are tuned to Albus‘ magic, and to curses that might kill him, and her little, simple hex fires right through them, not ripping them apart, but simply slipping beneath, and then the most powerful magician in the room trips, and Dumbledore is on him in less than a second, his voice a mere whisper.  
„Avada Kedavra.“  
Grindelwald‘s body jerks up once, in a motion that Minerva will never be able to forget, and then settles on the ground.  
She manages to get up after a minute or two, shaking. The body on the ground looks wrong, twisted somehow. Albus has not moved, and she makes her way to him, treading carefully. There is blood on the floor, she doesn‘t know who it belonged to when it was still inside of a body (as opposed to being on the floor, red and black and drying already, like a new coat of paint, smelling of iron and death and nightmares), but she gives up on trying not to step into it since this is more important.  
Something urgent inside her tells her to get to Albus, now, that it is the most important thing she‘ll do in her lifetime.  
She‘ll think back to this, later, and ask herself if she was simply too slow. Tom will tell her that that is stupid and that everything that happened would‘ve happened anyway, but she is not sure, will never be sure.  
She reaches Albus, after too long of a time, and catches his elbow.  
He turns to her, his eyes blue and grey and hazy, having lost their sparkle once and for all. He is whispering, words she can‘t understand, always whispering and whispering and whispering.  
He won‘t stop doing that for the days afterwards. He will, actually, never fully stop doing that again.  
She listens to his whispers for a while, trying to make sense out of words that come out slowly, almost as if they are being forced to cross the threshold of his lips against his will. She does not understand that night, but she will listen again and again afterwards, after they have made their way back to the school, after they have ended the school year early, after they have sent all the other teachers and students home, and it‘s just the three of them, Tom and Minerva and Albus.  
Tom takes a long time to heal, and the silvery scars on his chest reach all the way through his body, mirrored on his back. She does not want to think about how close this night has been, for all of them.  
It gets better, or at least they pretend that it gets better.  
Albus talks to them, finally, in this mere whisper that seems to have become his only voice.  
He tells them about Grindelwald, who he still calls Gellert, as if they are not the same person at all, and about the summer that they shared, and how it ended with the death of Albus‘ sister, and how he still isn‘t sure if he was the one who killed her.  
He tells them about the years after, the letters that Gellert sent (because Gellert would never stop sending them), the nights he lay awake thinking about joining him.  
He has never meant to kill Gellert, he says. He cannot kill Gellert. He will never kill Gellert.  
Somewhere along the lines between these three sentences, he seems to forget that Grindelwald is already dead and gone, and it is their mistake to not correct him.  
They make another mistake by believing that he‘ll be fine on his own.  
Minerva realizes in this time that she does not know the man in front of her at all, neither the wizard he was not these shattered remains. They talk a lot, but she still doesn‘t know him, truly, and she can feel them drifting apart even further.  
And then, one day, Albus is gone.


	20. Tom

Albus is gone, and it‘s a miracle it has taken him so long.  
Tom has suspected from the moment that he opened his eyes again, in the midst of blood and black and forgetting, and seen the body on the floor, and the look in Dumbledore‘s eyes.  
He still doesn‘t call him Albus, it feels inappropriately close to call him Albus, when he doesn‘t know the man at all.  
They tell themselves not to worry. Minerva becomes headmistress, on the explicit wish of the ministry, and she does a good enough job, but there is no joy in her anymore.  
They keep teaching and when the school year resumes, they almost succeed at not worrying too much about it.  
That is, of course, before the rumors start up.  
It‘s a trickle first, that slowly develops into a stream, whispers and talk and screams telling of a new Dark Lord.  
Minerva doesn‘t want to believe it, because she is good and brave and true, but Tom, who is a broken thing himself, knows exactly that it is Albus, and when they find out, in the spring of 1946 that it is indeed Albus, and he has taken up the cause that his lover started, it comes as no surprise to him.  
Albus is mad, he knows, and he suspects that it might be his fault. Something inside of Albus, the something that kept the tattered remains of his fragile mind together, must‘ve known without a doubt that his sanity wouldn‘t survive Grindelwald, and that something has been right.  
They try to keep on going, and they don‘t fail on all levels.  
Generations of students come and go, and receive letters full of tears every morning for breakfast. It is a grim time, and they grow up to be grim people, and but that is what these years need.  
It‘s not as bad as it was before. Dumbledore is mad, nothing more than that, but he is not utterly evil. He kills, but it‘s lesser, not that frequent. Millions of people live without ever seeing him.  
Others do not live.  
Tom goes out hunting for him every night, and returns in the morning, unsuccessful. Minerva stays behind, warding the castle against intruders – they are sure that Dumbledore will try to come back and take the students as his own, and they are right, since he does try to get in several times – but the wards have learned to keep him out, and Minerva has learned to keep them up.  
They don‘t talk much about what they‘re doing at night, it‘s too dark to steal their days away as well, but in the morning, when he slips into her bed, cold and tired and often with more wounds than he had when he left, he finds her embrace, and her finger trace the silvery scars on his chest.  
„Tomorrow will come“, he says, when he has to wake her from nightmares, screaming Albus‘ name, and his name, and other names he can‘t place, begging for forgiveness even when she has done nothing to be forgiven for.  
It‘s not all bad, but it mostly is.  
James Potter and Sirius Black make their days a little more fun when the two of them come around (and fun is, as Black says whenever Minerva catches them at doing something forbidden, the only thing that can help get through these oh so dark times, professor), and Tom takes a young scrawny Slytherin under his wing who turns out to have a special talent for potions.  
Tomorrow will come. It is a grey tomorrow, full of tears and blood and regret, but it comes all the same.


End file.
